Small businesses could lose up to £12,000 per day if they were without access to their mobile phone, research out today has shown.

Firms with up to nine employees would on average miss out on almost four new business opportunities, each with an average value of over £3,000, every working day if their mobile was out of action, a survey conducted by YouGov for Vodafone UK revealed.

A whopping two-thirds (67 per cent) of small business owners and employees surveyed claimed their mobile phone is vital to the running of their organisation, however more than half (55 per cent) of respondants said they don’t have business phone insurance.

Mobile is everything – and is now growing at the expense of all other media.

All traditional media will shrink this year: cinema will be down by 0.5 per cent, outdoor by 0.8 per cent, television by 1.5 per cent, radio by 2.4 per cent, newspapers by 5.6 per cent and magazines by 6.7 per cent.

Zenith is forecasting time spent with desktop internet will fall by a massive 15.8 per cent.

Despite its recent decline, traditional television remains by far the most popular of all media globally, attracting 177 minutes of consumption a day in 2015.

Internet consumption came second at 110 minutes a day. Television accounted for 41 per cent of global media consumption in 2015, and we expect it will still account for 38 per cent in 2018, when the internet will account for 31 per cent.